


Out In the Cold

by JG Firefly (Phoenix_Call)



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, Hollstein - Freeform, Vampires, does it count as a slowburn if its a oneshot?, semi-dystopian au, tw: brief suicidal thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-21
Updated: 2018-01-21
Packaged: 2019-03-07 11:30:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13433811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phoenix_Call/pseuds/JG%20Firefly
Summary: “Do you want to come inside?” she asked.Each word fell deliberate and concise. She spoke like she was answering a question on a game show in the 80s, like she were responding to a riddle for a Sphynx.Based on the tumblr post: As winter begins to unfold across the land, please remember the local vampires. Invite them into your home. Remember: if you are cold, so are they.





	Out In the Cold

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr post originally by evilsupplyco
> 
> Warning: mention of suicidal thoughts
> 
> Special thanks to Marzi for the support/advice!

 

 

**As winter begins to unfold across the land, please remember the local vampires. Invite them into your home. Remember: if you are cold, so are they.**

 

“Um, excuse me? Miss? A-are you okay?”

The sidewalk was cold. Carmilla was aware of this in no short measure—she had been aware of it when she dropped to the ground and put her back to the graffiti-coated bricks of this middle-of-nowhere apartment building, and she was still aware of it, now, nineteen hours later.

Cold was not something she was used to. She was far more familiar with complaining about the opposite, in fact… arguing with Mattie that a hat was unnecessary, that a scarf was overkill, that she would literally rip out her throat if she showed her another goddamned _vest_.

Blending in was boring. It had been absurd, once, too… in a world that did not know it needed to look over its shoulder. What was the fun in going out and clutching coffee cups in bumbling, wool-plastered fingers? What was the thrill of dashing across barely-frozen ponds when it was done in puffy coats and not sun dresses?

 _Someday the sun will eat you, chéri,_ Mattie had taunted.

Carmilla smiled at the memory, laughter echoing in her ears alongside the distant thrum of the ten o’clock warning bells. Mattie had bought her sunscreen. She had chucked the bottle at her head, when she found it mixed among the wine and fine chocolate, the biscotti tins and tea bags of her entirely unnecessary, though not unwelcome, _birthday present_.

 _The sun is my friend_ , Carmilla had mused, her eyes flashing with pride. _She fights for me against the moon, and they both win in their time._

Paris. That had been in Paris. The late 90’s, Carmilla thinks. William had been there—they had pinned him down. Slathered him in the putrid lotion while he laughed and bit at them.

She almost searched for the scar—the movement was a phantom, an imaginary reach of her still hand to tug back her sleeve and find the ghostly crescent just above her elbow.

 _You little fuck_ , she had snapped, when he broke nearly to the bone. He had stilled, until she leapt at him, tumbled them both out the window. Oh, what a disaster that had been on the midnight streets, even the drunks dodging away as they rolled and laughed until Mattie picked them up by their scruffs and declared them children.

Mother had been somewhere in Japan, she thought. She had sent a little bottle of sake, and no card.

A simpler time.

“Miss?” the voice came again.

Carmilla frowned, let her bleary eyes rove upwards. A child-sized human was awkwardly hunched in front of her, gripping an alarming number of shopping bags and holding her eyebrows in a steady, questioning raise.

“Jesus, Hollis, are you insane?”

Another figure joined the first, and Carmilla’s vision clicked into view like slow-loading pictures had once done on the old phone screens. The ones she had only learned to use in their graveyard years. The years before the satellites went silent and the towers glinted blue.

“C’mon, you moron. Get inside. Don’t chat up the street-vamps.”

Their height difference was startling, but they appeared about the same age. College students, probably. One with more sense than the other.

She let her eyes slide shut when the door slammed behind them.

Paris. Yes, she thought she’d like to spend her last night in Paris. The dark behind her eyelids was solid and heavy, but she could draw up the glimmer of strung lights and the pitch of Christmas carols, if she let herself give in to the swimming, floating sensation. It was like being at sea, she imagined.

Three hundred years, and she’d never boarded a boat.

What a strange regret.

The floating was nice, though. She hummed a few notes along with the chorus, let her head rock back against the brick and pretended it was the patio of her first apartment in the city. The one with the view of the Eiffel Tower, the one that she had slipped cash from the family vault to drop for the down-payment.

Worth it. Oh, had it ever been worth it, if but for those few short months before the call to Styria, and the start of a fresh cycle…

The apartment had not been there when she returned, but there was another, and more beyond. They blurred together, with their bookcases and meaningless trinkets and fur rugs… it was the first that she remembered. It had come with a thrill that was so close to freedom, so close to _humanity_.

Perhaps that was why Mother had hated it so.

Carmilla would never know.

She blinked her eyes open as the door shut, a low snarl breaking from her jaws. She had been pouring a nice glass of wine, settling against the balcony to watch the fireworks for some event across town—perhaps it was New Years, and she was blurring events, but she did not care. It was too beautiful for her to care.

“Watch it, fang-face,” snapped the tall one. She was alone, and glaring. She had her fists curled at her sides.

Once upon a time, Carmilla would have mocked her. Would have worked up the sarcasm and the just-close-enough-to-home-that-it-hurt taunts.

Or she’d have bitten her.

She sized her up, all six feet or so of her absurd Amazon frame, her flaming hair bound back in braids that showed off the slim line of her neck. She was pale, with the faintest smattering of freckles and light eyes that blazed.

Oh yes, she’d have drained her.

A boot swiped at her, knocking her knees together. Her hips rolled to the side, her jeans scuffing through the dusting of not-quite-snow-not-quite-ice that had tinged the world with gray all morning.

Carmilla hissed, but did not fight back.

“Move on, Drusilla. Come on. Scram.”

She swiped out again, but the way she ducked back after making contact said her bravery was not entirely up to par.

“Fuck off,” Carmilla snapped. Or, it would have been snappy, had her voice not croaked and rattled at the mere two words. She winced, and caught the glint of delight on Ginger’s face.

And then the damn bells rang again.

Eleven. The hour had gone in a blink, had whisked away with the vibrancy of a better night. The sort of night that brought life to old phrases about time flying in the name of fun.

“You hear that, right?” the girl taunted. She waved in the direction of the Town Center. The master tower. The one with the fucking bells. They were still ringing.

_Seven… Eight… Nine…_

“Go haunt some other building, got it?”

Carmilla did not move. She smiled again, a laugh purring low in her throat. It was not on a frequency that the human could hear, but her grin was enough. She earned another kick—this one higher. It caught her ribs, and she roared with the last of her energy, fangs flashing as she pressed her back to the brick and clutched her arms tight about herself.

It was cold. _So cold_.

She could feel the bruise like an icy dagger, and her breaths were labored as she glared fire up at her tormenter.

“Fine. Stay for trash pickup. I hope they build you a nice little pyre, bloodsucker.”

The ginger did not go back inside. Hands shoving deep into the pockets of her trench coat, she strode off with the heels of her boots scraping at the sidewalk. The sound echoed long, cutting off Carmilla’s access to the deep, to the release of Paris.

She should never have come back to Styria.

There was nothing but ghosts, here, nothing but the echoes of those who had been snared up before her, who had fought sooner and braver… who had not fled and cowered, who had not watched the embers of the world curl around everything there had been to love until it was dead and cold and all that was left was smoke.

And there was smoke, now.

The scent was low, and deliberate—not the four alarm, siren sort of smoke, but the slow drag of nicotine and regret.

She tilted her head back, stared upside-down up the vertical slum of barred windows, and found the thin trail of gray lilting up towards the stars. The open window let out a little blast of static, and then tuned to one of the few radio stations that was still operational, that was not merely a stream of news on the _containment_. A raspy male voice commented on the likelihood of a real storm for Saturday, on the rising price of strawberries and the recent drought in the Americas. There was chat on politics and the pointlessness of a new King of England and the latest scandal with the German presidency.

Carmilla let the words lull her, let her eyes shut and think about the old simplicity of television and online newspapers, the way she had once sank cross-legged into the oversized mattress of an Irish flat, letting Podcasts play mindlessly while she did up her hair for a night on the town.

She was allowed to be sentimental, she mused.

After all, she was going to die tonight.

It wasn’t until the final bells rang, the last of the twelve gongs burning out, that she let Her visit. Let her dead heart burn just this one last time. Flowing white gowns with bows, hair coiled just so, lungs jumping uneven against her lap as she rolled poetry off her tongue… oh, the things she had not seen in years, the voice she had not let sing. 1872 was a book long gathering dust, a book that split her open when its spine so much as cracked…

“You should probably move, you know.”

Ball gowns fell away to the blue tint of Graz at midnight.

The radio had gone silent. She caught the tap of a fresh cigarette being rattled from its box. A match sizzled.

“Smoking kills,” she rasped back.

Her own wit, flickering so weakly back to life, drew a smile. Perhaps she would die as herself, still. A fraction only, yes, but there was some dignity under the weight of this dreadful fortnight.

There was no response, and she went to close her eyes once more.

If she focused, she could hear the start of the sweep. They would spread out from their posts, street by street. She did not want to waste what she estimated would only be another ten or so minutes.

“You do know that they’ll take you, if you stay there… don’t you?”

Carmilla ground her teeth. Squeezed her eyes shut tighter.

_The waltz was a blur of motion, her gown a perfect periwinkle to her partner’s pink… her cheeks dusted just a hue lighter and that precious little mole twitching up with her lips…_

“Jeez, do you have a death wish, or something?”

“For god’s— _leave_ it, cupcake,” she snarled. Her hips protested, as she turned to crane her neck upwards. She couldn’t see the girl—not with the bars in the window—but she could count well enough to tell she was on the third floor. Her fingers poked out, the cigarette tucked neatly between index and middle.

It was the same girl from before. Carmilla had always been a quick study in voices.

“Your girlfriend know you have a hankering for lung cancer?” she tacked on, the mutter quick and bitter and not entirely meant for her ears.

The girl heard her anyways.

“Ex,” she said.

Carmilla would have pinched the bridge of her nose, were she capable of lifting an arm that far.

“What?”

 _“Ex_ -girlfriend.”

The quick surge of surprise winked out in an instant. She did not care enough.

Still.

“You should tell her that,” she mumbled.

The response came immediately, chipper and edged with amusement. “Oh, I have, actually. Doesn’t do much good. Apparently I’m not capable of protecting myself, and I get why she’s freaked out, I mean, it’s not every day that you get—”

She cut herself off. There was a light sweeping its way towards the cross street.

Carmilla felt her shoulders tense against her will. She’d been ready for this all day. There had been no preparations to make, no will to update or friends to warn, no reason at all, really, to put it off another evening.

There was no shelter. There was no blood.

There was no point in looking for either.

“They still make those patches,” she commented blithely. She could visit her memories on the way to the pyre. She could let them sink in when the burn was real—when it was no longer in her head. “For quitting.”

The words were met with silence, and when she raised her tired gaze she found the hand was gone, and the trail of smoke with it.

An odd final conversation. She wasn’t sure if it was something to regret, if it was a worthy closing, but it hardly mattered with the end being as final as it was. There was nothing after this—not for her.

Not unless it was hell.

The searchlight swung. Began its slow trek down the battered pavement. Eleven buildings, at best. She had perhaps sixty seconds, perhaps a few more.

She already knew she would not fight the nets.

The door flew open, and the woman-child scrambled out in bare feet and pajama bottoms, her eyes dark but huge. When she swallowed, her throat bobbed and the very motion of it drew a longing hiss, a breathy whimper out of Carmilla’s lungs.

“Do you want to come inside?” she asked.

Each word fell deliberate and concise. She spoke like she was answering a question on a game show in the 80s, like she were responding to a riddle for a Sphynx.

The fire that shot through Carmilla’s veins was instantaneous. She felt her eyes blow wide.

Insane.

This girl was _insane_.

And Carmilla could feel the doorway as though it were physically linked to her. She could feel the warmth of the wood and the dig of the screws for the brass plate that read ‘300’ in fading black. She could feel the hum of the radiator, the creak in the fourth step, and the wobble of the railing on the second floor.

Her feet pushed at the sidewalk, finding no purchase in the slurry, and if her heart could beat it would be hammering.

An invitation _._

Invitation _._

_Invitation._

The girl glanced up the street at the armored truck, slowing now to scan the alleyway beside a burnt-out bakery. Her hair swung out over her shoulders, dark and damp from a shower, and it slapped wet against the bare of her shoulders. She shivered, and then dodged the rest of the way from her building, her feet hopping up and down and toes curling.

“Holy crap it’s cold,” she gasped, in the same instant as she held out a hand.

Insane.

Carmilla had thought this through. She had made up her mind, had long fallen past the point of fighting, of trying, of caring what happened next—

She reached up and took the small, warm hand in her own.

Her limbs were brittle, joints popping and skin bursting with pins and needles as the girl pulled her upright. Her face drew itself into sharp lines as she stomped down upon a cry.

She nearly toppled over, but the crazy girl held her upright, tugged her by the sleeve of her ratty hoodie, and abruptly they were inside.

“So, um, I’m just upstairs. Sorry there’s sort of no elevator.”

She eyed Carmilla nervously, now, the way a mother might regard a raccoon her child had dragged in and insisted upon adopting. The hairs on her surprisingly toned arms were starting to stand up, and it was a wonder that she did not release her hold on the soggy jacket—that she did not shove Carmilla back through the entryway in time for the sweepers.

It was as if they were both waiting on this, facing each other in the cover behind the solid wood, close enough that Carmilla could feel the girl’s heartbeat. It thrummed, hot and alive, in her throat.

The search light roved past. The grainy rumble of the wheels faded, turned, disappeared.

They were still staring at one another.

She had not drank in weeks, was not strong enough to hunt, and yet there was a meal inches from her. Like a sacrifice, like a gift from the universe…

The girl shifted backwards and rubbed at her neck with an awkward sort of awareness.

“Right, um. So I… _invited_ you, and all that.” She extended the other hand. “I’m Laura. Laura Hollis. Please don’t eat me.”

“Was that invitation not also a dinner offer?” asked Carmilla.

She was joking, but nonetheless watched the way the girl’s expression paled before she let her lips curve into a smirk that had long missed the light of day. This had been amusing, at the least. And it meant one more day in Paris.

She reached for the door: “Have a good night, cupcake.”

“Whoa, hold up a minute,” the girl—Laura—interrupted.

She put a hand on the door to smack it closed again, but Carmilla did not let go of the handle. She raised an eyebrow, and watched Laura flush all the way to the tips of her ears.

“You’re just… going back out there?”

Carmilla could not understand why there would be an edge of disappointment in her voice.

“I’m dying,” said Carmilla. Her voice was flat, the words as irrefutable as the hard edge of her gaze.

“Oh,” Laura breathed. She swallowed, again, gaze roving over Carmilla as though looking for some physical evidence of her culminating mortality.

She would have scoffed, if she had the energy. And then, oddly, she did. The sound was foreign, even as it rang familiar—like an old friend Carmilla had not realized she was missing.

Laura was undeterred. “What, exactly, are you dying… from?”

This was possibly the most bizarre conversation Carmilla had ever held. Perhaps she had been picked up by the sweepers after all. Perhaps she was delirious, now, or even dead.

“I thought that was obvious.”

“Like… hunger, then? Or I guess it would be thirst?” She waited for acknowledgment, and Carmilla used a few more watts of her remaining energy to roll her eyes.

And then Laura said the least expected words in the world, and Carmilla knew she had left reality behind.

“I sort of have some blood? In my fridge. If you want it.”

If she were more cognizant, more of her rational and suspicious self, she imagined she’d be questioning this as a trap. She’d be picturing a laboratory and dissection equipment and all of the trappings of nightmares she had heard from the covens before they were picked off, one by one—whether it was to the pyre or the black market, the survivors could only ever speculate.

Instead, much as she had found her hand latching onto Laura’s out on that sidewalk, she found herself nodding, now.

Laura kept by her side up the many, many stairs. It was a narrow space, and she could feel her breathing and the sheer warmth of her flesh with every shift of their steps. She knew her own touch was cold, that it was the thing drawing the little hitches in Laura’s breathing as they climbed, and she stepped clear the moment they arrived at the third floor landing.

Laura had not locked the door to her apartment. She pushed open the door marked ‘7’ with astonishingly little regard, and gestured Carmilla through the archway.

The rest of the building was silent, lost in apathetic sleep, no more bothered by the sweeps than their ancestors had been by trash pick-up. There was not so much as a stirring of teenage pop music, or the squeaking of late night activities from overhead.

Laura went straight for her kitchen, her steps more of a scurry as she dashed over the patchy carpet. She had to hop on tiptoes to dig through the glasses in her cupboard, and Carmilla almost salivated at the reality of the crimson-filled mason jar that she pulled from the top shelf of her refrigerator.

“Do you want it, like, warmed up or something..?” she asked, when she had poured half the contents into a blindingly yellow mug.

Carmilla barely heard the question. She crossed the apartment at blinding speed, the very last of her energy pulsing through her muscles without consulting her brain. She collapsed against the counter, Laura yelping as the mug was torn from her fingers, and gulped down the thick liquid in desperate, near-choking swallows.

Life. It was like drinking pure _life_ and abruptly she could not imagine accepting the sweepers or the pyre or the cold of the sidewalk.

She downed the remainder of the mason jar as well, not pausing between, even when she heard a distant little “hey!” of complaint from Laura’s direction.

She was not full—not by a longshot—but she dropped both jar and mug into the sink beside a stack of soapy, half-washed dishes and closed her eyes.

“So, uh,” Laura began, the floorboards creaking under the shift of her weight. “Are we still on the same page about the—the _not_ eating me?”

The girl did smell slightly less delicious now that there was blood coating Carmilla’s throat and colors and sounds had stopped swirling together. The world had locked itself back into 2032, and everything about her current surroundings was more reminiscent of a candle shop than a restaurant. There was a waxy, sugary air about the apartment—and it _was_ an apartment, now that she was paying attention—a small one, at that. The whole ‘open concept’ had stopped being a thing years ago, which either dated the building in the 2010s or simply marked it as deeply poor.

There was a bed in the corner, tucked behind a flimsy fold-up wall with a floral pattern; the bookcases looked like they had been picked up off the street; and the only seating was a single couch that had definitely been inherited rather than purchased, unless she’d found a strictly 80s store somewhere.

Carmilla was betting on ‘poor.’

She stepped from the kitchen—which was really just a short row of countertops, a fridge, a sink, and a hotplate—and paced through Laura’s meager belongings.

“Where did you get the blood?” she asked, tossing the question casually over her shoulder as she picked up a book and flipped through it. Something modern, by an author she did not even recognize. She had fallen woefully out of touch in recent years… that, or the girl simply had bad taste.

The row of classics she found on the shelves, though, their spines cracked with lines of love, suggested otherwise. 

Laura sputtered, hovering somewhere between the supposed ‘kitchen’ and her coffee table. “The _no eating_ thing?” she demanded. “You—you are going to answer that, right? Because I’d sort of like to know, now, if I’m going to be the second course.”

The blood was warming in her veins. Carmilla let herself stretch, as languid as her cat form, and heard her spine release a satisfying _crack._

“So you could run?” she asked.

Laura, surprisingly, glared at this. And then she crossed her arms and _huffed_.

She was waiting, expectant and frustrated, and so Carmilla tugged a hand through her tangled hair and met the glower with a seriousness she had not even expected from herself.

“Relax, creampuff. Of course I’m not going to eat you.”

While Laura’s shoulders relaxed, her words still came quick and biting: “That would sound more believable if you didn’t keep referring to me as types of pastry. My _name_ is Laura. And you still haven’t told me yours.”

“Carmilla,” she said simply, on a shrug. “It’s Carmilla.”

She did not offer a surname. Laura did not ask for one.

“Okay,” the girl said, letting out her breath in a big puff. “Carmilla. Okay. So, I have a vampire in my apartment. And she’s _not_ going to eat me… but she’s totally got an open invitation, now, and _holy crap_ my Dad would kill me if he knew about this.”

She began to pace.

“I’ve never made a good impression on parents, if it helps,” Carmilla offered.

Laura stared. “It does not.”

“I do find it interesting, you know,” Carmilla said, as she sank into the couch, “That you asked me about having a death wish. When clearly you have one of your own. Do you make a habit of inviting dangerous supernatural creatures into your home?”

“No,” Laura said, the word indignant even as she flushed a new shade of pink. She drew herself up to her full height—all five foot, two inches of it—and faced her with an expression she probably meant to be determined, or perhaps forceful.

Carmilla thought it was rather cute.

“We are going to establish some rules.”

“Are we, now?”

Another glare. _“Yes._ Because this is my apartment, and the inviting thing can definitely be undone. Somehow. LaF would know. Or I could just move! There’s that! That is a definite thing.”

Carmilla raised an eyebrow. “Are you assuming I’m going to be coming back here?”

“I am being… _preemptive.”_

“That your word of the day, cutie?” she grinned.

“Wha—that is so not—get your feet off my coffee table!” Laura knocked them down with a push of her hands, and then stood back and took a long, slow breath. She was still quite pink around the ears. “Okay. Okay, I’ve got some questions.”

Carmilla waited, crossing her arms.

Laura pointed a finger at her. “You’re not—I mean, you aren’t one of those _murder-y_ vampires, right? Like, I know the majority have been living on blood bags and all of this persecution stuff has gotten wildly out of hand after the English launched that whole campaign against non-humans, but there were definitely some vampires that were— _why are you laughing?”_

“Sorry,” Carmilla managed, biting her lip to force down another hiccup of mirth. “No, I am not one of the… _murder-y_ vampires.”

_Well, not anymore._

“You’re making fun of me.”

“What gave you that impression?”

“The laughter,” Laura deadpanned, with just the barest hint of a pout.

The pout tugged at something in her gut, flipped some sort of switch she had not realized existed. “Laura,” she said, her use of the girl’s real name heavy on her tongue. It instantly had her attention. “You just saved my life… I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Well, yeah, you’ve said that. But if you leave here and just go off on a killing spree, then where does that put me?”

Carmilla resisted the urge to laugh, again. She looked so serious. So worried about her place in the grand scheme of vampire cosmic balance sheets.

“I’ll be out of town by morning,” she said, and, at Laura’s raised eyebrow, added, “And not killing hapless strangers along the way. There. Happy?”

She should be gone already, in fact. Public transportation was not an option, and she would need to use all of the energy from Laura’s offering of blood to make the journey to the countryside. From there… who knew. Anywhere without watch towers and sweeps. Anywhere without public executions.

There was nothing left in Styria. This was the only chance she was going to get.

“Where _did_ you get that blood?” she asked, again. She sucked the last of it from the crooks between her teeth.

“Oh. Well, um, my Dad insisted that I have some on hand, just in case I needed to use it as a bargaining tool someday? He’s… a little overprotective. He thinks the city is crawling with vampires.”

It had been, not so long ago.

She did not let herself think about that.

“I’d say this is the _opposite_ of his intentions, wouldn’t you?”

Laura’s voice was pitched with nerves, “Uh-huh.”

Slowly, Carmilla stroked through the pages of the book on the end table at her side. The motion was familiar, comforting. Like petting a cat.

“I’ll leave as soon as the sweeps are done,” she promised, not quite meeting Laura’s eyes.

“Oh. Okay.”

Laura fidgeted, and then sat on the edge of the coffee table and toyed with the strings on her pajama pants. Now that Carmilla actually looked, she saw that they were covered in cherries, each with a smiling cartoon face.

“Do you, um, want something to eat? Like, human food, I mean.” Her eyes went wide. “And by _that_ I mean the leftover chicken I’ve got in the fridge, or some cookies or ice cream, not human food like… _human_ as _food_ …”

Carmilla chuckled. “Don’t hurt yourself, cutie. But… I suppose I wouldn’t say no to ice cream.”

Laura was back on her feet in an instant, declaring “great!” as she dodged into the kitchen and rustled through her things. She returned in impressive time, armed with two heaping bowls. She hesitated before she offered one to Carmilla, and then delicately set herself down on the far end of the couch, nestled into the crook of the pillows with her feet tucked up.

“I suppose Big Red would have a heart attack if she knew I was here?” Carmilla asked conversationally, as she chased a few walnuts through the fudge sauce. Where Laura had obtained actual toppings, she did not know. She hadn’t tasted chocolate in _years_.

“Big R—oh, you mean Danny?” she let out a low scoff. “Definitely.” Her spoon clicked against her teeth thoughtfully as she scowled down at the last remnants of her ice cream. “We broke up a few months ago, but we still work together, so she thinks she has to walk me home when we stay late. As if I don’t know Krav Maga.”

Carmilla raised an eyebrow.

“And it’s not like the paper is that far from here. It’s like four blocks. Sure, some people are unhappy with my last article, but, I mean, that’s the risk of journalism, right? Not everyone is going to agree with you.”

Carmilla couldn’t help but think that anyone in this girl’s life—be it her father or this Danny—had some reason to be concerned. There was a vampire in her home, after all. Sitting on her couch. Eating _ice cream_.

She did not say this out loud.

“You’re a journalist?” _So, not in college after all._

At once, Laura lit up. “Oh, yeah. It’s great. There are so many stories that need to be heard, right now, and with the whole shutdown on the internet and television, the paper is more important than ever. People are actually reading, and I think we can make a real impact. My latest piece, actually, got a lot of response. It was on vampires.”

Carmilla steeled herself. “Oh?”

“Mhm. It’s like I was saying earlier, about how the majority just need a blood bag supply and aren’t looking to be like… Angelus or anything. I mean this isn’t even a Buffy scenario at all; vampires are people, too.”

_Vampires are people, too._

Mattie would have loved that.

“Can’t imagine why people might be upset with you,” she commented. She gave her spoon one final lick and set the bowl down on the coffee table. “So, am I your experiment, then? Testing the safety of vampires?”

It was not an accusation, by any means. Laura’s motives did not matter to her—not when she was very much alive and not currently being set on fire.

Laura flushed, regardless, straightening her spine. “No! I wouldn’t—I have principles, and I write about them, and those principles involve following the things I say, which are that the sweeps shouldn’t even be a thing. What kind of person would I be if I left you out there?” Her expression twisted, and she looked down at her lap. “Besides. I’m a good judge of character, and you—you seemed nice. You _are_ nice.”

Carmilla could not help but think that Laura’s words were a direct argument _against_ her character judgment.

She changed the subject.

“Where did you pick up the bad habit?” she asked, nudging her chin in the direction of the window. The pack of cigarettes waited on the sill, her last one standing upright in an ash tray.

“My mom,” Laura said. There was a heavy finality to the words, a wary edge in her tone.

Carmilla nodded, recognizing that she had chosen a dead end. “Ah.”

The clock on the wall said it was well past one o’clock, now. The sweeps were over. She should go, take advantage of the night, put as much distance between herself and this place as she could manage…

“You can stay here, if you want,” Laura blurted out in a rush. She didn’t merely turn pink, this time; her cheeks went straight to crimson. “I mean, I’m not even sure if vampires actually need sleep, but I’m sure the couch is better than—than a bus seat.”

She didn’t bother correcting Laura. The stuttering of her words suggested she knew just fine on her own that buses weren’t a real option.

“Vampires do sleep,” she admitted. Her fingers squeezed the edge of the cushion.

This was a terrible idea.

 _Run. Run now_.

“I’ve got a lot of extra blankets. I can just—I’ll go get them?”

Carmilla did not move. Laura fluttered to a shallow closet beside the only real door in the apartment—behind which Carmilla could only assume lay an impossibly small washroom—and came back with at least three blankets and a stack of pillows.

“I’d hate to see you with _actual_ company,” mused Carmilla, once Laura had shooed her off the couch and began transforming it into a bed.

She was expecting a retort along the lines of ‘you are actual company,’ which would be in keeping with her absurd views on vampires thus far.

Instead, her brow scrunched up and she murmured, “I don’t have much company.”

The admission drew Carmilla’s tongue back as though it had been pricked by a needle. She took a corner of the blankets and tugged them into place while she watched Laura go about her nightly routine—brushing her teeth, applying lotion, setting alarms. She raised an eyebrow in a distinct ‘no’ when Laura hesitantly offered her pajamas to sleep in.

And then the lights were out, and Laura was tucked into her bed behind the absurd curtain-thing, her breathing soft and constant, drifting into faint, whistling snores all-too-quickly.

It was as though she were truly unafraid of being drained in her sleep, as though she had believed Carmilla’s promises without a single reservation.

 _Insane_ , Carmilla thought again.

Yet, when her thoughts drifted inward, her body curled warm within a swath of vanilla-tinted blankets, the word shifted.

_Kind._

///

It was bright, when Carmilla wandered back into reality. _Warm_ and bright. It took her a minute to piece together her surroundings, to become aware of the cocoon of blankets she was nestled in and the faintest drifts of coffee and cigarette smoke in the air.

 _Laura_.

She sat up, the maroon and gold blanket from the top of her pile slipping onto the floor. The shades had been pulled, their dishes from the night before had been cleared away, and the bed in the corner was made and decorated with a small collection of plush animals.

The girl was nowhere to be seen.

Wrestling herself free of the couch, she scanned the single room with wakeful eyes. The little furl of paper on the counter caught her, tugged her to the still-warm pot of coffee resting beside a clean mug. There were packets of sugar and little single-serve creams piled neatly beside, and Carmilla could not help the bubble of incredulous laughter that slipped from her.

She read the note quickly.

_Carmilla,_

_I hope you slept okay. I didn’t want to wake you, since you seemed pretty exhausted. I imagine you’ll be gone by the time I get back, so I guess this is goodbye. Thank you for the interesting evening. Safe travels, and help yourself to the coffee._

_-Laura_

Carmilla shook her head—and then she folded the letter neatly and tucked it safely into her pocket.

She had lost the advantages, the anonymity, of night travel, and so she poured herself a generous cup of Laura’s coffee, ignoring the cream and sugar, and settled back into her makeshift bed. She drank in slow, thoughtful sips, staring out the window. The view was nothing to write home about—Laura’s street was as bleak as any other, and looked no better to Carmilla by morning—but there was a lone tree across the way, and she softened as she watched its last leaves ripple through shades of red and gold in an unexpected breeze.

The apartment was different by daylight. Where it had been curious and pale the night before, soft and creaky about the edges, today it was vibrant, _loud_. Everything Laura owned seemed to be vying for attention, waving its unique energy like the feathers of a bird in mating season. Her walls were not decorated with art or photographs, but with old-fashioned movie posters. On the shelves with the books were an assortment of trinkets—old toys from fast food restaurants and keychains featuring cult classic sci-fi shows that pre-dated her by at least two decades.

Carmilla chuckled a little, as she picked up a pin that read _What Would Hermione Do?_

There were not many personal artefacts. She located a total of two picture frames, small and unobtrusive in their space on her nightstand. One showed a little girl nestled between her smiling parents. The other was of a group of gingers, arms linked as they laughed. Carmilla recognized one of them as the Amazon from the night before, and she scowled before she put the things back where she had found them.

She was contemplating the ethics of _taking_ something—a souvenir, of sorts—when the harsh ring of Laura’s telephone nearly jolted her out of her skin. It echoed five times, with Carmilla frozen all the while, before the answering machine picked up.

_“This is Laura Hollis. Do the thing!”_

It beeped.

 _“Fucking vampire apologist!”_ a man’s voice snarled into the apartment, venomous and cold. _“You should burn on the pyre with them! I would put you there myself, you filthy whore!”_

Carmilla did not move, her mouth open and her whole body vibrating. The silence that fell when the machine chirped cloaked her with the bitter, familiar tang she only associated with the dead and dying.

The little red numbers on the machine jumped, ticking up to register the new message (26) and just like that, Laura’s words from the night before sank in: _“Some people are unhappy with my last article.”_

Carmilla crossed the room and jammed her finger into the ‘play’ button. It robotically announced the number of recordings, and then began to run through them, one by one.

Some were short, like the one that Carmilla had just overheard. A few slurs, a few threats, and then gone. Some were long enough that they were cut off by the machine. A handful of those called back, rambling onwards in their fury. Men and women alike, old and young… they railed on Laura, their threats graphic, sickening.

 _“I know where you live,”_ more than one promised.

No wonder Xena had walked her home the night before.

Carmilla glanced at her empty coffee mug. She washed it and placed it in the drying rack with its siblings. She poured out the pot, rinsed away the stains, and tucked the cream and sugar back in their jars. She folded each of the three blankets neatly, matching the edges and leaving the stack on the edge of the couch with the pillows piled beside.

And then she left.

///

The trouble was that she did not have a destination.

That was what Carmilla told herself, for the sixth or seventh time that week, as she clambered the rest of the way up a drain pipe and rolled onto the familiar roof.

If she had a place to go, she would already be gone. She would not be scrounging things from dumpsters and sleeping in tattered blankets wherever there was a cozy enough corner, and she would certainly not be staking out the apartment of some human girl she had known for a mere evening—a blink in the scale of her lifetime.

Still, her muscles relaxed once she was on her perch, feet dangling over the crumbled brick and back arched like a pale, wingless gargoyle. Laura’s lights were on.

The night before, the girl had detoured on her way home, stopping at what must have been the last standing Thai food place in the city to grab takeout, and the move brought her to the stoop almost an hour after she was due. Carmilla had already returned to shelter for the night, by then. She did not quite have the words to describe the drop in her stomach when she checked the windows, and then her watch, and then the windows, again.

She had very nearly sought out Laura’s office.

Tonight, Laura was already settled on her sofa, eating her leftovers with chopsticks. There was a book tucked up against her crooked knees, and her hair was back in a thick, French braid. Her brow wrinkled as she turned back a few pages. After a moment, she extracted a pen from somewhere in the cushions, pulling the cap off with her teeth, and scribbled something into the margins.

That was interesting.

Laura had a lot of quirks like this. On Tuesday, she had sorted her collection of CDs—twice. Wednesday, she had ironed seemingly every article of clothing in her possession. And then, yesterday, she had gone through every book on her shelves, frowning as though she had somehow _known_ that Carmilla had slipped in and borrowed her copy of _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_.

Through all of this, she barely seemed to sleep, staying up until bizarre hours and leaving for work while it was still dark. When she listened to the news, it was a sporadic event rather than a scheduled nightly ritual, and she rarely tuned in to updates from the containment front.

The smoking habit also seemed tamer than Carmilla had encountered in most humans her age. She returned to her window to puff thoughtfully only one more evening that week, and snubbed out the cigarette before she had even made it halfway through.

Watching her, alive and so very human in her uncertainty and clumsiness and poor life-choices, Carmilla felt a peace that she was not quite ready to acknowledge.

When a car pulled to the curb out front, shortly before the ten o’clock bells were set to begin their tolling, Carmilla saw Laura tense for the first time—the only indication that she was aware of the danger presented by her work.

As far as Carmilla could tell, she never listened to the threats, merely leaving them on the answering machine. This, in itself, said she knew they were there and that they bothered her, and yet every outward appearance seemed _blasé_ towards the whole thing. Claiming she didn’t need to be walked home. Picking up food well past dark. Leaving her door unlocked while she dashed out into the cold.

From the car stepped a relatively non-threatening figure. They were short-statured, with a flop of ginger hair and a broad-shouldered build. They were carrying a wrinkled brown lunch bag.

On her perch, Carmilla tucked her legs up and crouched. Her eyes narrowed. The figure took the three stairs to the door with deliberate, cautious steps, and then slipped inside.

In the same beat, Laura, setting down her food, disappeared from Carmilla’s line of sight.

She shifted on the balls of her feet.

Laura had said she did not have much company—had said so in small, honest words. And who would be out at this hour, paying a house call? The car was unmarked, green but with scuffed paint, and the passenger door had been badly replaced. It was bright red. Clearly not a delivery service, not that Laura could afford that sort of thing…

The figure re-emerged, hands tucked into the pockets of their hoodie, and hopped back into the car. They pulled away carefully, tires rumbling over the mix of salt and slush.

From across town, the bells began to ring out their first warning.

Carmilla watched Laura flit back and forth, unharmed in her apartment, toothbrush sticking from her mouth as she put away the dry dishes. When she went to sleep, her single light snuffing out, Carmilla rolled away from her perch and tucked herself beside an old, out-of-use exhaust turret.

It wasn’t until morning light, when Laura had long disappeared on unknown Saturday errands, that Carmilla realized there was a crimson jar sitting between the bars of the window.

///

Laura wrote in the margins of her books. Not all of them—but most.

Carmilla discovered the first real notes of interest when she helped herself to a collection of Edgar Allen Poe short stories. She had already gone through most of the Shakespeare on her shelves, the familiarity of the words like the touch of an old friend at her shoulder, and had found most of the uneven scrawl to be amused commentary on the numerous sex jokes and clever insults.

With Poe, though, Laura wrote in small, adult scrawl, the words slanted and nearly running off the edges of the page. She was in awe of Dupin. She was in love with the prose, with the simplicity of _The Purloined Letter_ , with the subtle horrors of _The Murders in the Rue Morgue_.

The commentary was more spread-out within Agatha Christie, and at first Carmilla thought her handwriting had aged again, or that with the blue ink of an unfamiliar ballpoint she did not have the same flow of script onto the pages. It took her until the last pages of _The Murder of Roger Ackroyd_ , feet dangling off the roof of the old banking building and a bag of liberated croissants at her side, before she realized that the words had not come from Laura at all.

_There is always new story waiting, when one knows the ending. You merely have to turn back to Page 1. –E.H._

Carmilla did not borrow any more of Laura’s books.

///

The short ginger never stayed long, when they visited. Only once, during that first month, did Carmilla see them enter the apartment and accept a drink from Laura’s refrigerator. They talked briefly, neither sitting down, and there was a touching of shoulders and a nodding of heads.

Whenever they came, there would be a fresh jar waiting on the sill by morning.

///

Winter had almost faded out, the sky blue and clear for the first time in moons, when Carmilla spotted a new sort of offer waiting between the bars.

There had been a jar not two days prior. It should have been over a week before the next would make its appearance, and, as such, she had not been looking, and could not be sure how long the book had been there. The pages were curled from the cool of the air, but not rippled with the rain from that weekend. When she collected it, dropping quick as lightning to the sidewalk and shifting up into the branches of the lone tree, she recognized at once that it was new.

Not new from the factory—she had not seen such a creation in at least a decade—but new to Laura’s collection. It did not smell of faint tobacco, and the words were lonely on the pages, without Laura’s to accompany them.

Inside the front cover was a brief message:

_I feel as though we are having a one-sided conversation._

Hooked into the spine was a weighty, office-worthy ink pen.

When Carmilla pressed it to the margin beside Nick Carraway’s opening lines, commenting _I can see this is advice you have taken quite seriously, cupcake_ , the words flowed in brilliant green.

///

Carmilla had read Laura’s article. She had hunted down a copy of the correct paper in the bins outside the train station, and had read it through dozens of times during that first week.

The words were etched into her, now, as recognizable and poetic off her lips as lines of Mary Shelley or verses of Emily Dickinson. She murmured them aloud to herself on nights when Laura had gone to sleep and the stars were reaching down for her with their aching light.

With the threats fully tapered off—not one of them carried out or even attempted—Carmilla was startled to hear Laura’s phone crying out well past midnight.

The air had turned warm, with the arrival of March, and Laura kept her window at least cracked for most of the evening. Sometimes she sat beside it and muddled her way through a cigarette or two, gaze long and searching while Carmilla tucked herself into the more protective of rooftop shadows, and they were in one such lonely yet companionable night, now.

On the answering machine, a voice ground out a very specific plan.

It involved slitting her throat and leaving her in an alley to see just how friendly vampires really were, though the language was far more colorful than that.

The words were not unfamiliar, even as unexpected as they were on this simple Friday evening, and so Carmilla was not anticipating it, when Laura dropped her cigarette to the sidewalk far below and covered her mouth with a trembling hand.

She heard the sob, caught it when Laura’s own neighbors certainly would not have.

And she was across the street before she was even aware of leaving the rooftop.

“Laura?” she asked quietly, when her first knock received no response. It took a moment before the deadbolt was pulled back, the chain slid aside and the door cracked.

The girl’s eyes were huge with surprise, mostly dry even as they glinted red at the edges.

“Carmilla,” she breathed. The name was almost a question, and it shivered down Carmilla’s spine in a way that made her _want_. Laura slid halfway out of view, brushed the heel of her hand over her cheek. “Wh-what are you doing here?”

“I finished your book,” said Carmilla. As simple as though it were the truth.

Laura paused, and for a moment Carmilla thought that would be it—the door would shut, and she would leave, and perhaps she would find the energy not to come back, this time.

Instead, Laura pushed the door wide, without a word. Her shoulders were tense as she clicked each extra lock back into place. There were more than Carmilla had realized. She did not know when Laura had gotten them added.

“I’m out of blood,” the girl said, at last. “LaF has been a little busy, so they haven’t had a chance to get any, but it’s only been a week. I’m sure they’ll get me some by Tuesday.”

Carmilla paused by the window, fingers hovering where they had been about to re-trace the flower Laura had drawn in the fogged glass.

“I’m not sure why you’re apologizing,” she murmured. She pressed her lips thin, closing her eyes, and did not turn to face her. There was a cracking, aching tug within the cage of her chest. “I don’t expect anything from you, Laura.”

“I know,” came the surprised response. Her eyebrows were raised, when Carmilla glanced her way. “I just—you’re here. You’re never here. At least, not when I am.” Her shoulder slouched in a lopsided shrug, “Ice cream seems sort of… inadequate.”

Carmilla released a little hum of breath. “I hardly think so.”

Laura had chocolate, this time: soft, melting chocolate ice cream from a freezer that was no longer in its better years. Carmilla ate it in rapid slurps, her little murmurs of satisfaction drawing warmth into Laura’s cheeks. She grinned openly, when Carmilla’s spoon chased the last droplets around the edges of the bowl, and she fetched the rest of the carton without question.

They talked about books, about the authors Carmilla had seen rise and fall with her own eyes, the ones she had hunted down for philosophical conversations in seedy pubs around the world. They talked about the Bronte sisters and the correct accent to use for Shakespeare and the last television shows they had loved before the signals went quiet.

Laura showed her the charger rig-up LaF had put together to supply battery to an ancient iPod, and then they talked about them—about their lab and its loss of funding and their marriage to someone named Perry.

And, at long last, they talked about the article.

“I thought it was over,” Laura admitted, once she had finished blowing on the surface of her fresh mug of cocoa and risked a first sip. She barely flinched when the hot liquid hit her throat. “This isn’t the first time, you know. I wrote some things, back when all of this was first starting, but, well, those were in my school paper. The worst that happened was that I got kicked off the staff. Nothing came out of anything that people said they’d _do_ to me.” She pressed back into the couch cushions, legs tucking up to her chest, and dropped her chin to her chest. “It was a lot of words, and I just… did my best not to let them get to me.”

“You never thought about just… staying quiet?”

Laura shook her head. Smiled every-so-slightly. “It’s not in my blood.”

They both watched the steam rising off of her mug, curling slowly into nothingness. Carmilla cradled the empty ice cream carton between her palms, rolling it back and forth.

“I wouldn’t let them hurt you,” she murmured. There was a ringing in her ears that drowned out everything but the catch in Laura’s breathing. “If they ever tried—I wouldn’t let them reach your door.”

Laura’s expression shifted, torn, and settled on a sad sort of indignation. She sniffed, “I don’t need to be _protected_. I’m more than capable.”

“Oh, I know.” Carmilla set down the carton, turned on the couch so she was facing Laura, her back pressed into the armrest. “You just don’t deserve to face that… Not alone.”

///

The Perry woman worked in grocery distribution. It was through her that Laura obtained her assortment of rare treats, the ones that were hard sought and absurdly up-charged. Despite the limited quantity, the dry spells in her supply of chocolate and the way she tracked her cookie stash with charts and specialized containers, she shared everything openly with Carmilla.

More than once, she split a final chocolate bar in half and insisted on Carmilla having the bigger piece. When Carmilla would press back, arguing that Mars were her favorite and wasn’t that her last one, Laura would only shrug and move the conversation on to literature and pop culture and gossip from America.

The sweets always tasted better, on those days.

“So,” Laura began, one Sunday morning when Carmilla was lounging amidst the blankets of her perpetual couch-bed, chewing on a few gummy worms from the latest haul, “I was thinking maybe it would be nice to have some company.”

Carmilla swallowed. “What sort of company?”

“Just LaF. And Perry. And maybe Danny?” When Carmilla said nothing, her posture stiff and one eyebrow arching higher than the other, she tacked on, “It’s just that I talk about them so much, and you haven’t met any of them. Plus, LaF is getting kind of curious, what with all the blood.”

Her witty retort about this being Laura’s apartment, and therefore none of Carmilla’s business, died in her throat. “You… want to introduce me to your friends?”

Laura swiveled her desk chair, chewing on the barely-there eraser on her old school yellow pencil.

“Well, yeah. I mean you kind of, sort of… live here?”

She peered up through her eyelashes, teeth digging uncertainly into her lower lip. Carmilla’s eyes widened.

It wasn’t that Laura was wrong—at some point, Carmilla had stopped leaving. She would show up to trade books, and they would talk for hours, their words carrying through dinner until Laura was shoving blankets at her and she was caving to the coziness of the couch cushions. Where she had once slipped out mid-morning, and drawn a respectable line of distance for three or four days, she now waited upon Laura’s return. Laura, in turn, would toss her keys down and begin babbling about takeout options the moment she stepped across the threshold.  

“When are they coming?” she asked.

Laura’s eyes positively sparkled. “Wednesday! Oh, this is going to be great!” She crossed the room, and Carmilla reeled back in astonishment at the press of Laura’s lips to her cheek. Stars jumped across her vision at every rapid-fire blink of her eyelids.

If Laura noticed, she said nothing. She was still beaming as she extracted a thick textbook from her bookshelf, bounding back to her workspace.

When her vocal chords untangled themselves, Carmilla cleared her throat, “You should tell Perry to bring more of that chocolate liquor.”

///

Even with Clifford glaring at her, and LaFontaine’s entirely unsubtle queries about vampire biology, the evening was not the nightmare Carmilla had dreaded it would be. Perry brought champagne and a pack of brownies that she had gathered enough ingredients to put together from scratch, and Laura interjected endlessly into the awkward silences until Carmilla had heard at least a dozen stories from their lives.

The four had attended university together, though LaF and Perry had known each other practically out of the womb. There were stories about science experiment fiascos and rumors of hauntings in the dormitories, and Carmilla tried not to think about another school, a school buried under the earth, and the truth to rumors that had once circulated there.

It was all before their time. They laughed and smiled, and Perry offered her another brownie. She took it.

///

“Alright, give it a go!” declared LaFontaine, snapping the last clip into place on the cuff. It was heavy about her wrist, and she lifted her arm to inspect the leather.

Laura looked uncertain, as she held up the spray bottle.

“Are you sure about this? I mean, if it doesn’t work—”

“It’ll work. I swear.”

Carmilla tensed her shoulders, prodding at the cuff. “Go on, cupcake. Get this over with.”

Laura pulled the trigger, her face drawn into what would have been a comical grimace, had Carmilla not been too busy suppressing the urge to duck away. The mist settled over her, the smell horrible enough to flare her nostrils and draw unnatural heat into her cheeks. Oh, she really did not like—

_Oh._

Blinking, she turned slowly to face the grinning scientist. “How did you do that?”

“Well the garlic compound they use in all of the vamp-deterrent systems is engineered—it’s not natural. It’s meant as a sort of poison that works against your immune system. Which makes your body shut down and sort of convulse… and yeah, okay, you already know the details. Anyway, the cuff is sort of like a vaccine patch. It’s telling your body not to panic.”

Carmilla was still staring at the accessory, lips parted in disbelief.

“So, this means…”

“Welcome back to society, Carm,” whispered Laura.

///

There was something incredible about the simplicity of a public library, or the counter of a sushi restaurant, or a corner table at a worn-down coffee joint. Each new visit drew a fresh astonishment in her, conjured up memories and familiarities and prickled at the space behind her eyes.

She had forgotten. Somehow, in all of it, she had _forgotten_.

Pubs smelled like frying oil and vinegar and spilled beer, the tobacco buried so deep in their wooden joists that it was almost possible to forget that smoking had not been welcome in dining establishments for decades. Diners were still shiny with their metal-ridged counters and their squeaky red booths; the milkshakes still tasted best through a childish swirl of a straw.

Carmilla did not break when they visited the remains of a sweet-shop she had frequented in the 70’s, she did not fall apart when they wandered the halls of a hotel she had called home for several months in the early 2000’s.

She was fine, really, until Laura tugged her by the hand towards the hideous structure of the modern art museum one Saturday evening in July. The security check passed them through with a ping of green light, once the mist had settled, and her feet began a course of their own through the halls.

“What is it?” Laura murmured, touching her arm with the barest feather of her fingertips.

Carmilla had brought them to a small painting, set by itself on a wall between two archways. It was abstract, simple, an experiment in colors and shadows… two eyes peered, yellow and green, from dense greys and olives.

 _“Prey,”_ Laura read quietly, from the placard. Her breath rushed out: “C.K., 1967.”

It was still here.

And Carmilla cried.

///

The news broke on a rainy Tuesday, in mid-October. Carmilla was waiting on an order of burgers and fries at a greasy joint that Laura particularly liked, tapping her shiny new credit card on the counter and absently watching the cashier flirt with the girl who had just ordered.

She had gotten off work early, on a request she had made of Perry that morning. Laura had been handed an assignment on street repair, and the article had come out in yesterday’s paper to little interest. _“This isn’t what I want to do with my life,”_ she had insisted to Carmilla over glasses of contraband wine, the faintest sniffle in her voice.

Wrapping her in her arms had seemed enough, at the time, but Carmilla had heard her crying in the shower at four in the morning, and she had disappeared for the office hours before she was expected there, without leaving the usual coffee for Carmilla or even pressing a kiss to her forehead—a habit that she had developed and that Carmilla did nothing to discourage.

In fact, she had taken to feigning sleep to encourage such behavior.

The very least she could do was bring home dinner, even if it set back the savings she was building up—the savings she intended to use to bring Laura somewhere far nicer than _Cheeseburger Hut._

Soon.

Her number had just been called when a woman yelled, “Mac, turn that up!” and someone dialed the volume on the radio that was droning in the corner. Carmilla had been tuning out the background static along with the mundane conversations of families and motley packs of teenagers, but she froze when the words rang through the small space.

She was not the only one. _Everyone_ stilled, heads turning, eyes widening.

_“We have cleared the scourge upon our city. We have eliminated this most in-human threat. With the capture of the last known vampire within our borders, I can officially declare Graz the first safe-haven for humanity, an example I plan to set for the remainder of our great nation—and the world!”_

_“That was Chancellor Vordenberg, speaking from the Town Center just minutes ago. With this new—”_

Someone let out a whooping cheer, and it rallied, carried, until the place was roaring with clapping hands and whistles and shouts of triumph.

“Smile, kid!” a woman with horse-teeth cried, squeezing her shoulder.

“Just shocked,” she mumbled, ducking the grip and snatching her bag from the counter.

The streets were no better. The world had curled itself into a bubble, stepping out of reality. Cars were stopped, doors open and people running in the streets. Flags had come from somewhere, Styria’s symbol waving from dozens of hands as the chants of “Vamp-free!” reverberated off of store-fronts and sidewalks.

Carmilla tugged her hat down low over her eyes, one hand gripping the bag and the other squeezing around the protective cuff at her wrist.

The walk back to Laura’s apartment seemed to take an eternity. Every false smile she was forced to give along the way ate like acid in her stomach, and she wondered at the identity of the vampire they had found, the one that would no doubt be paraded through the streets tonight, the one that would face the most vile of pyre’s Graz had yet known…

When she turned her key in the lock and pushed her way inside, her muscles were about ready to give out under her. She was not sure she could even stomach the burgers, though she would try, if only for Laura’s sake—

And Laura was standing in the center of the living room, her face tracked with tears and a violent tremble tearing through her whole body. Her mouth fell open as Carmilla froze in the entry. The mug she had been holding tumbled from her grasp, shattering at her feet and spattering the grey of her sweatpants with brown.

 _“Laura_ ,” she flashed to her side in a blur, hands cupping at her cheeks and thumbing at the moisture she found there. “Laura, hey, talk to me.”

A sob tore from her throat. She hauled Carmilla into her arms with so much strength that it very nearly hurt. Carmilla pressed back, albeit more gently, her arms hooking around Laura’s and fingers splaying over shoulder blades.

“It wasn’t you,” Laura choked. Her breath was hot and wet in the crook of Carmilla’s neck. “I thought—I thought it was _you._ I heard, and I came home, and y-you weren’t here, and I just—I thought it was you and I couldn’t—I _couldn’t…”_

Carmilla’s stomach dropped, her fingers digging tighter into Laura’s warmth, tugging her more securely into the embrace.

“It wasn’t me. I’m here, Laura. I’m right here.”

Laura drew a shuddering breath. “Don’t leave,” she whispered. “Please, Carm. Don’t ever leave me.”

In her three hundred and some-odd years, Carmilla had not once meant a promise with the raw conviction that she meant the one she murmured, now, into the cool of Laura’s hair:

“Never.”

///

The celebrations faded out with the day. The radios, still proclaiming victory for the containment movement, declared the final vampire a prisoner of war, to be used for extraction of information instead of public execution.

Carmilla knew better.

“They don’t exist,” she murmured into Laura’s shoulder, tangled so close on the couch that she could not be sure which limbs were hers without shifting them. When she shook her head, the brush of contact sent goosebumps down Laura’s arm. “They didn’t catch another vampire at all—it’s just a show.”

“A horrible show.”

Laura turned, shifting their joined torsos so that they were facing one another. Her eyes were dark, searching, and she bit at a patch of dead skin on her lower lip.

“Carm… when we first met, why did you stay? You told me that you’d be out of the country by morning, and then you stole my books and took my offerings of blood and you just… you _stayed_.”

Her face was so close. Carmilla could count the little freckles that painted light over her nose, barely there.

“Hope,” she said.

At the word, Laura frowned, lips parting with a soft _pop_ and eyes searching, hunting for a teasing light, a hint at the punchline written somewhere in Carmilla’s expression. She did not find one.

“What does that mean?” Laura asked.

Carmilla drew a breath through her nose, let it flutter out of her lips so that it tickled at the hairs falling loose over Laura’s eyes. Her head was lit like a halo in the dim glow of the setting sun, brunette strands shimmering gold.

“Sometimes, it’s better to run. But, if I ran, it would mean I cared more about living for the sake of living… not living for anything real.”

Laura’s gaze darted downward, her tongue slipping out to run over her lips.

When Carmilla continued, her voice was shaky, “And, if I had left, maybe I’d be _safer_ , sure. But, I would still have nothing.” Her eyes locked with Laura’s. “Here…”

“You have me,” Laura murmured.

She was soft, serious, and, this time, when her eyes shifted to Carmilla’s mouth, so did her lips.

Carmilla fluttered her eyes shut, and when Laura inched away, breath ghosting out on a sigh, she tugged her back in with a hand tangling into the downy hairs on the back of her neck.

Laura tasted like burnt vanilla, like red wine and Belgian chocolate and a thousand memories played out across the seasons. She pressed back with an urgency, hands lacing around to burn hot against the lines of Carmilla’s spine.

When Carmilla shifted back, eyes open and hungry, drinking in her tousled hair, her reddened cheeks, the dark rounds of her eyes, she shook her head with a fresh urgency and the correction leapt eager from her tongue:

“I have _everything."_

**Author's Note:**

> "In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.  
> “Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”"
> 
> -The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald


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